Friends with Benefits

August 19, 2006

Think Pink

What’s that you're drinking? A rosé wine?

What use to be the anti-cool is now the new cool. Thanks to dedicated European winemakers rosé wines have risen in quality and they can no longer be lumped into the category of “convenience store wines”.

Don’t confuse rosé with blush zinfandels. They are two very different wines. Blush zinfandel is akin to Kool-Aid, dry rosé is crisp, tart, loaded with fruit and pairs well with everything from sushi to a sandwich. The French have long known the quality of rosé wines and is their summer drink of choice.

Rosé wines have been so maligned that a self-help group of rose fans, Rose Avengers and Producers , has organized to “right the wrongs done to rosé”.

How to know you're buying a real, dry rosé and not Kool-Aid? Look on the label for the alcohol level. If it's 12 percent or above, it's dry, fermented until all the sugar is out of a wine. If it's below 12 percent it's most likely sweet.

Bill Buford: HeatHeat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany- A perfect Pig Roasting Pigmailion story from desk jockey to line cook in New York's Babbo restaurant

Mark Kurlansky: Salt: A World Historyfinally finished this sodium saga and while it's slow in many places, it's still a fascinating read about the history of salt and how different cultures in the world have lived and died for this simple element. Other food origins revealed as well. It's no Sidney Sheldon but give it a try.